I recently came across a video of a interview with Applied Materials CEO John Antone. What I found most fascinating was a new term Antone used in discussing solar power’s road to grid parity – peak parity. It is a term I find fascinating for two reasons. But first to what Antone meant by peak parity.

Solar energy produces the vast majority of its electricity during peak hours. That is, sunlight is most intense at the same time that electricity is most in demand. During the day when work and school are in progress, cooling needs are highest and our power-driven society is going about its business.

During these hours, the cost of electricity, as it is sold or traded between utilities and power providers, is considerably higher than it is during off-peak times. Grid parity refers to a base load rate, which you’ll find on your utility bill, but unless you have time-of-use metering in your state, your bill may not reflect the wide variance in electricity costs during the day.

When Antone said that solar power is much closer to peak parity than grid parity, he was stating that solar power’s price per kilowatt-hour was getting close to that of conventional electricity, but only during those peak hours. There are a few important implications in such a statement.

Setting the Bar

For starters, inventing a term such as peak parity provides the solar industry with an easier bar to reach.

It is a fortunate characteristic of solar energy that it’s most intense during peak demand hours. That alone should solidify its place in our energy future. With peak parity being much higher than grid parity, we have a goal that’s much easier to attain. In many cases, one could argue that we’ve already reached peak parity and are working our way closer to that of the grid.

Okay, so Antone has given us a positive goal that is very attainable in the short term. However, he implicitly admits that there can be no solar base load!

No Solar Base Load

To accept peak parity implies that solar is still very far from – or can’t possibly reach – base load potential, or the ability to supply all of our power needs all the time. This is a notion that few in the solar energy industry will admit to. And I don’t mean to say that Mr. Antone is diminishing solar’s potential in any way, but the implications of focusing on peak parity rather than grid parity are undeniable.

As fortunate as it is that solar power is strongest during peak hours, its inability to produce anything after nightfall is a nagging problem. A problem that has spawned aggressive research into storage mediums, such as new battery technologies, molten salts, fuel cells and more. It’s a problem that must be solved for solar power to gain the base load recognition yearned for by so many in the industry.

Antone’s sincerity for solar is unquestioned and his company is working hard to literally cut costs for solar production. But the idea of peak parity begs an oft-ignored question: Can solar go it alone? And the honest answer, for me… I don’t know.

Photo Credit: Jesper Särnesjö

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Posted on September 1st in Solar Information by Dan.